Like I said in your other question, You are no longer limited as you had been in the past. I have a mixed up system here. I have a built in VIA ATA 100 controller that has two hard drives a DVD and a CDR. I have tested the system throughout various configurations and because of my IDE controller I can arrange these any way I want to and data transfer speeds are not an issue. It treats them as if they were all on an independant cable.

What processor are you running? If we knew what MOBO we could tell you but for the most part many of the T-Bird supporting Motherboards will support ATA 100, some even support RAID as well. You should know what you bought. Why not tell us what motherboard you have?

and the FASTEST INTERFACE speed shown there is ATA66. I'd assume (especially since custom designed motherboards like Compaq's RARELY include features beyond those required for the design) that this motherboard is capable of NO MORE THAN ATA66. In fact, it's not 100% clear from the Compaq specs that the motherboard even supports ATA66.

You can put your ATA100 drive in this system but it will NOT work at ATA100 speed unless you also install an ATA100 IDE controller card.

With a Quantum "Bigfoot" series hard drive, it is highly unlikely this machine supports ATA-100. These drives are notoriously slow (thus the extremely low cost) and knowing Compaq, they wouldn't bother with the expense of a fast controller if the supplied drive wasn't going to use it. IF you're very lucky, it might support ATA-66. It's likely to be original ATA ("ATA-33").

Since a nice Promice ATA-100 controller card is only $29.95 mailorder, go ahead and get it. They are faster than generic motherboard ATA-100 controllers anyway.

"is it not a good idea to connect an ATA/66
Hard Drive or CD-Rom Drive to the same IDE Cable?"

I have found that as long as the CDROM drive is also ATA compatible then there is no speed loss from the hard drive if well written drivers are available. Watch out though, unless the CDROM in question is reasonably new, it will NOT be an ATA device but an older UDMA4 or slower device. Combining one of those with an ATA-100 hard drive will certainly slow the drive down.

I guess this question was too easy... since the answer is a simple 'no'.

Ok, now that I have my Maxtor ATA100 PCI Controller Card and cables... does that mean I now have 4 channels (for a total of 8 IDE Devices)??? Or does the PCI Controller Card disable the two IDE channels that are on the mother board?

This is important since I want to connect 5 devices. New Hard Drive w/ New CD-RW, Old HardDrive w/ Old CD-Rom, and a ZIP Drive. If not, I'll just have to get rid of one of the old devices.

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I can't even mix speeds on two different Slots on the Controller card? I thought you were saying don't mix on one slot using the same dual drive cable.
The PCI Controller Card has two slots. (Primary, Secondary)

And... I repeat -- if i can use both the motherboard and the ATA100 Controller, does this mean that I can use all four slots (connecting up to 8 devices)?

No, don't put words in my mouth. I said, and still say, don't mix speeds on the SAME IDE CABLE. The different channels on the IDE controller are completely independent of each other. There are permitted no more than 2 IDE devices on an IDE cable.

Yes, you can use all 4 IDE channels provided your system has enough free resources to support them all.

I'm sorry jhance, but according to Maxtor, the new ATA100 Controller Card can have two different speed drives and not default to the lower speed.

I guess the points belong to pbessman... I'm not sure... this question is irrelevant, too, because I'm returning the Maxtor Controller Card. My Compaq 5714 does not allow me to boot from hard drives connected to the controller card. Should I post another question on this? I think it would be pointless because I really think it doesn't work.

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